Why I LOVE The Last of Us | A Retrospective of Living

was that everything you hoped for jury's still out oh man can't deny that view [Music] the game company naughty dog has been known to make some of the most influential games of their time such as the original crash bandicoot games jack and daxter and the uncharted series while those are great games that gave the company a great reputation none of those games changed the industry as much as the last of us the last of us is critically acclaimed with the title of one of the greatest games of all time and over the years it climbed its way up to being the third best-selling game on the ps3 with 7 million sales with the remastered version being the 8th best seller on the ps4 with 10 million sales the game is considered a masterpiece by many including me which is why i wanted to talk about why i love the game so much like always quick disclaimer here this is only my third video documentary so there may be some mistakes also there will be plenty of spoilers in this video so play the game before watching this video to get the ideal experience i also want to mention that i'll mainly be talking about the remastered version when i'm talking about the graphics since i don't own a ps3 to play the original version now let's talk about how this masterpiece of a game came to be after the incredibly successful release of uncharted 2 naughty dog split into two teams for the first time one team working on uncharted 3 and the other team starting a new game project based on an idea from then game developer neil druckmann druckmann had an idea for a zombie game involving a police officer and his daughter in which the characters had to work together and the player character would switch to the daughter whenever the officer's heart problems acted up it was an interesting concept but they had some tweaking that needed to be done before they could take action on the idea naughty dog decided against the idea of the two characters being related as they felt it didn't allow for character development between the two and the main character went from a police officer to a smuggler the development of the game was kept on the down low for a long time until they finally announced it at the spike video game awards alongside a trailer for the game hey there you are you okay better than that guy search them i obviously can't show the whole trailer here but it really is a great way to announce the game it is pretty ambiguous all it does is show off the partner dynamic between joel and ellie and some of the threats that they'll be dealing with but it's done in a way that captures the audience's attention and makes them hungry for more information about the project thanks to naughty dog's reputation for making great games people were incredibly excited for the game and the gaming industry changed when the last of us released on june 14th 2013. the moment the last of us released people fell in love with the game it sold 1.3 million units in just a week and the sales didn't stop quickly it's no wonder why people liked the game so much it had interesting gameplay great characters and one of the best stories found in gaming to better see why the game was so incredible let's dig into the specifics of the game starting with the soundtrack the soundtrack was composed by gustav santo allele gustav santalela yeah that's probably right and the songs that he made for this game are incredible he does a great job of making songs that sound a bit somber but also a bit hopeful and he brings out the intense music when he has to something that you'll notice in the soundtrack is that a lot of songs share the same title but just have different subtitles for example we have the main theme of the game rightfully titled the last of us which has a guitar as a main instrument and has an intense beat but we have the last of us never again which is significantly slower and calmer and has an orchestral instrument being played instead [Music] having these variations of the main themes does a great job to familiarize the player with the music that plays on my first playthrough i was actually able to recognize the songs i played since i heard them earlier in the game and for some reason it made the scenes feel more impactful hearing a similar theme throughout the game the gameplay of the last of us is simple but effective it follows a trend that a lot of games have where stealth is encouraged but you can go in guns blazing if you'd like though it'll be more difficult the game is in third person and the player has to follow a linear path that is disguised by areas that can be explored for loot typically to traverse the player is presented with an obstacle and they're required to look around to find an object to help them progress for example if a tall truck is blocking the way you may need to find a dumpster to push in front of it to help you climb on or maybe there's a ladder nearby that you can prop onto the side of the vehicle scenarios like this make the game feel less linear than just walking forward and fighting enemies since the player regularly has to go on detours to move the story along the survival side of the game shines through with the crafting system there are different types of materials that can be found in the environment such as blades tape cloth alcohol explosives and sugar the player can use these to make different items to help them in combat there are predetermined crafting recipes in your inventory for example one cloth and one alcohol for a med kit and this linearity makes the crafting necessary but not difficult for combat the player has to fight zombies and humans quite often and the first weapon you have are your fists if there's just a couple of low-level zombies in your way you should have no problem punching them to death as long as you have adequate health you can also sneak up behind zombies and people to choke them for a stealth kill as you play through the game you get introduced to new weapons such as a revolver a shotgun and even a flamethrower there are also different types of zombies you can encounter such as clickers which are blind zombies who have great hearing and they can kill you in one hit so it's best to sneak around and try to kill them first there's also some tricks you can use such as grabbing enemies to use as human shields that can help you take out a large group of enemies finally the last of us has the occasional quick time event that can happen when you're grappled by a zombie or in cinematic moments to complete tasks that aren't normally found in the gameplay they aren't too invasive so i don't mind them all that much the last of us was released near the end of the ps3's lifetime so it's no wonder the graphics hold up so well to this day developers had mastered that generation of consoles so they used all the tools they could to make a great looking game that ran out of solid 30fps and the remastered version looks even better at 60fps the game actually looks really good on the remastered version of course when you look closely you can see the muddy textures especially in darker areas when they're lit up with a flashlight but in a nice bright environment this game looks like it could have come out five years later than it did it has a pretty realistic look but there's also a style to it that i can't quite pin down i think it's almost a little bit cartoonish sure it's dark and gritty but then you get into these open areas that are so bright and shiny it almost seems dreamlike i don't know maybe that doesn't make any sense but that's just the feeling that i get from it the environment around the player is usually really detailed and the world feels real because of the movie posters and billboards that are littered around the map at the end of the day the game still looks great and the 60fps the remastered version brings to the table increases the enjoyment a ton [Music] okay so so far we have a pretty good game with great graphics and solid gameplay but add the incredible story that this game provides and you are in for a treat let's start right from the beginning with one of the most iconic game intros to date we start out with a little girl named sarah sleeping on the couch late at night and her dad joel bursting into the room talking on the phone about a job that seems pretty stressful sarah wakes up and realizes that she still has time before the day ends to give her dad the birthday gift she got him a new watch they almost seemed to talk like friends despite joel being her father and clearly they're very close where did you get the money for this drugs i sell hardcore drugs oh good we started helping out with the mortgage then yeah you wish you can tell by the phone call in the late time that joel came home that his job keeps him busy and out of the house often but he seems to work hard to provide for him and his daughter sarah quickly passes out after giving him his gift and he brings her to bed calling her his nickname for her baby girl later that night sarah is woken up by a phone call from her uncle tommy who is frantically asking her to put joel on the phone but he gets cut off midway through the phone call [Music] hello sarah honey i need to get your daddy on the phone uncle tommy what time is it i need to talk to your dad now uncle tommy hello the player controls sarah and there are a lot of interactable items around the house that the player can look at while searching for joel joel seems to be nowhere in sight and the news report on the tv shows that bad things are happening in the city what was that oh god eventually sarah finds joel and he frantically grabs a gun and shoots their next door neighbor who is an acting right and is trying to attack them uncle tommy picks joel and sarah up so they can try to get out of the area and we already get a sneak peek of joel's eventual survival skills when they pass right by a family that needs help see what they need what do you think you're doing keep driving i got a kid joe so do we have room keep driving tommy unfortunately the streets are all backed up and while they're trying to find an alternate route through the city they get hit by another car everybody's alive but sarah has a broken leg so the players control the switch to joel while getting out of the car we get an extra close look at an infected person who grabs joel but luckily uncle tommy is able to save him by smashing it with a brick joel gives tommy the gun so he can carry sarah and they try to escape the city together while evading infected people in the explosions that are lighting up the city after some detours and encounters with the infected they flee into a building where tommy holds a door shut to let joel and his daughter escape they're able to find a military officer who kills the infected people chasing them but he also receives orders to do something else sir there's a little girl but yes sir somebody we've just been through hell okay we just need [ __ ] so clearly the government is wiping out civilians to stop the spread of the infection luckily joel's evasive maneuvers keep him safe and uncle tommy being the clutch master that he is shoots the officer before he can kill joel for good joel is fine but sarah not so much move your hands baby i know baby i know listen to me i know this you're gonna be okay baby stay with me i know baby come on baby please no baby i know sarah baby don't do this don't do this [Music] no no no no please [Music] please [Music] you have to have a pretty crazy intro to a game to get the tears flowing in the first 30 minutes this intro is iconic and it makes joel into the hardened survivor that we see later in the game it does a great job of setting up the mood for the rest of the game by showing that nobody is safe from the horrors of this new world after a cool intro video plays we get put 20 years into the future where joel wakes up in a rundown house to a knock at the front door he opens the door to see his partner tess on the other side and despite joel being a bit angry that she did a delivery on her own they clearly work really well together and have a lot of chemistry what matters is that robert [ __ ] sent them our robert he knows that we're after him he figures he's going to get us first son of a [ __ ] he's smart he's not smart enough i know where he's hiding like hill you do old warehouse in area five can't say for how long though well i'm ready now yeah all i can do now joel and tess are smugglers and they were recently scammed out of some guns by a guy named robert so the first mission the player has is to find robert and get the guns back when you leave the house the first thing of note is that joel is still inside of a semi-functioning city this is a huge contrast from the walking dead because in the walking dead the cities fell within a couple of weeks but here the government has been able to maintain quarantined cities for 20 whole years i do think that it's more realistic this way i mean you're telling me with the militaries that we have we wouldn't be able to hold down at least a few cities the problem with these remaining quarantine zones is that they're completely controlled by the government and they take possible infections very seriously well like always when things are controlled by the government there will be freedom movements that follow enter the fireflies the fireflies are a freedom group that defies government rule but they're slowly being wiped out despite their efforts in public stunts while joel seems to be big and tough tess is the one that's controlling everything she's the one leading her and joel to get them out of their quarantine zone to get to robert and everybody that's helping them along the way addresses her since she's the business side of the partnership eventually they grab their gear in a tunnel and make their way towards robert's base there seems to be a bit of romantic tension between tess and joel but we don't really get to know what the extent of their relationship is ain't been out here in a while it's like we're on a date well i am the romantic type got your way after some simple exploration we finally get to fight some infected and i think now is a good time to bring up the sound design in this game the zombies make guttural screams that sound horrifying and combine that with the environments and you basically have a horror game the sound when you punch the infections makes such a satisfying clap noise and it makes beating a few zombies up incredibly fun the guns make punchy and loud sounds that really make it feel like the noise is able to attract the zombies around you all these sound effects make the game super stressful and fun when you're sneaking it's relatively quiet but when the infected spot you and the real battle starts the audio really elevates the feeling another thing i should mention is that the virus in the last of us is based off the cordyceps mushrooms that are a real thing in real life that can affect ants in a way that kind of turns them into zombies so whenever joel finds spores in an area he has to put on a gas mask because if you breathe them in you get infected they leave the building they're in and test mentions someone named bill which is just a good excuse for me to talk about the excellent world building in this game bill isn't somebody that you meet until a few hours later into the gameplay so the fact that they are already making him an established character is pretty awesome joel and tess do some platforming and a little bit of bribing until they get into robert's territory and they encounter a couple of goons right away even though the goons are threatening them to leave tess doesn't take that kind of disrespect and she starts a fight by shooting a goon [ __ ] this take cover tess is honestly so cool i would say that she's the brain and joel is the brawn but tess has plenty of braun herself i think joel's role is to stand there and look like a bodyguard even though tess doesn't really need one fighting humans is a bit different than infected because the enemies usually have guns so the battle stays behind cover at a distance so it's best to try and stealth kill them to avoid having to use ammo luckily the game eases the player into the combat very smoothly with scenarios that are set up to help players get used to the controls like the stealth kill with tess after fighting through a literal horde of guards they isolate robber and chase after him and eventually they trap him at a dead end robert admits that he sold tess and joel's guns to the fireflies he tries to come up with a solution to get the guns back but again tess doesn't let things like that slide look they're basically all dead we can just just go in there finish them off we get the guns what do you say come on and [ __ ] those fireflies let's go get them that is a stupid idea right after robert is killed the leader of the fireflies marlene spots the duo and says that she'll give them their guns back and more if they do a smuggling job for her marlene knows joel and tests because of uncle tommy yeah remember him he ended up being a part of the fireflies before him and joel lost contact they reluctantly accept to get their guns back especially since marlena is in a pretty bad shape so she isn't much of a threat and they follow her to a base where the guns are being stored the fireflies are clearly very desperate which is why they're turning to a couple of smugglers for help and after fighting off some soldiers they get to a safe point where the cargo that needs to be smuggled is being stored we get a sudden introduction to ellie a 14 year old girl that's skeptical about the strangers that marlene brought with her the [ __ ] away from her let her go something to keep in mind is that the apocalypse has been going on for 20 years so the entirety of delhi's life has been inside these city walls surrounded by infected people eventually joel realizes that ellie is the cargo that they're smuggling and despite their hesitance the smugglers agree to the task as long as they can see the weapons first joel takes ellie to a waiting point while tess goes to check out the guns and something that you'll notice is that ellie trails quite a bit behind joel evers she doesn't fully trust him but you'll see throughout the game how that changes the short conversations that the two have are mostly just small talk about what they're doing or where they're going they get to an apartment room to wait for news from tess and ellie points out something to joel your watch is broken [Music] that's the same watch that joel's daughter gave to him and even though it's broken he wears it i feel like this is one of those moments in the game that cements the feeling that the rest of the experience is going to be awesome the way that jolt exhales and the main theme kicks in in the background is done perfectly i think this is when i knew the game i was playing as special when joel wakes up from his little nap he gets to talk to ellie for a moment as she talks about how she's never been this close to the world outside of walls joel is a super closed off person because of the pain he's endured but ellie's natural talkativeness is that is that a word and her childish look on things seem to open him up a bit tess comes back and they start their trek to sneak out of the city but they get caught almost instantly by a couple of patrol guards tessa's bribe attempts don't work and as they're getting scanned to see if they're infected ellie acts quickly by stabbing one guard in the leg allowing for joel in it test to take the rest of them out [Music] okay so ellie's got that survival drive unfortunately joel receives bad news from the guard scanner ellie is actually infected she claims that he's three weeks old and she hasn't turned yet even though that shouldn't be possible in this universe joel and tess don't have time to be cautious though since another cop car is coming towards them and they start their escape with tess guiding alienware to go they finally stealth their way through all the guards and ellie reveals that the fireflies believe that they can make a cure with ellie's immunity and even though joel isn't totally buying it they still decide to finish the mission at this point the trio can see the capitol building that they're taking ellie to so she can be handed off to the fireflies but the path there is rocky since they have to make their way through many buildings to get down to the ground level this is one of my favorite sceneries in the game all of these buildings are overgrown and deprecated and it's super cool to see a huge building like this tilted causing weird traversal scenarios to come up something that this game does great is introducing things to the players without giving them a blatant tutorial and it's mostly done through test giving information to ellie before we even see a clicker for the first time tess explains how they work to ellie which in turn explains it to the player clicker yeah what's wrong with its face that's what years of infection will do to you so what are they blind sort of they see using sound like that if you hear one clicking overall tess is the one who's trying to have conversations with ellie and she actually treats her like a person meanwhile joel just sees her as a liability in cargo while they're making their way through the building joel finds a revolver and the player gets to the first battle that they actually have to use their brain on a few runners and a clicker again the clicker can one shot you if it gets too close so it's best to keep distance or stealth kill it shortly afterwards the player has another enemy encounter with like five or six clickers so they really stepped it up fast something that's kind of cool is if you want to be completely undetected when stealth killing clickers you have to crouch and only move the analog stick part of the way forward and this helps it make it feel like you're actually being quiet because of how slow you move joel gets split up from tess and ellie so he finds another way around and when he gets back to test he sees her being grabbed by an infected that she handles shortly afterwards finally they get out of these buildings and on top of one of them we get a very iconic cutscene all right now watch your step as you're going up because it's going to be a little so is that everything you hoped for jury's still out oh man can't deny that view i'm not exactly sure why it's iconic but i think it has something to do with joel opening up a bit and joking a tad about if the outside world was everything she hoped tess suddenly seems to be a lot more business about getting to the capitol building which shocks joel since their roles seem to be reversing a bit they get to the capital but when they open the door they find that the fireflies camping out had been completely wiped out joel seems to think it's not a big deal and the job is over but tess is frantically trying to find out where they may have been going because well i guess you should just take a look holy [ __ ] she's infected joel let me see oh christ give me your arm this was three weeks i was bitten an hour ago and it's already worse this is [ __ ] real joel you've got to get this girl to tommy's he used to run with this crew he'll know where to go no no no that was your crusade i am not doing that yes you are look there's enough here that you have to feel some sort of obligation to me so you get her to tommy's [Music] they're here damn it i can buy you some time but you have to run you want us to just leave you here yes there's no way i will not turn into one of those things [Music] that clicker that we saw her push off of herself is the one that did it and i love how you can see the subtle clues of her acting differently after she was bitten tess realizes that with no fireflies nearby to make a cure that she isn't going to survive so she's now a full-blown believer that ellie is immune and that she needs to be taken somewhere to make a cure her one last wish for joel is to take ellie to uncle tommy and she decides to have one last stand when a bunch of guards pull up to the capitol building allowing joel and ellie to make a break for it of course joel isn't happy about leaving her behind but he doesn't have any other option tessa's death is pretty sad for me she was hardened but still nicer than joel at first and it's crazy how memorable she is as a character despite her early death in the game joel and ellie fight off some guards until they get into a subway station in which joel has to put on his gas mask so he doesn't breathe in spores of course ellie's able to breathe them in no problem and i think this is when joel and the player realize that she really is immune otherwise she would be coughing and gagging on the spores in the air how the hell are you breathing in this stuff i wasn't lying to you [Music] suddenly making a vaccine doesn't seem like as much of a pipe dream they get past the guards but nature gets in the way when they get to a flooded area and ellie can't swim which is a puzzle that will consistently come up throughout the game there are some jank swimming controls but usually the water puzzles just involve grabbing a floating pallet for ellie to stand on while joel moves it around they finally get out of the tunnel and ellie tries to talk about what just happened but joel seems to have already shut himself off from his emotions about tess as he refuses to talk about it hey look um about tess i don't even know here's how this thing's gonna play out you don't bring up tess ever in fact we just keep our histories to ourselves secondly don't tell anybody about your condition they think you're crazy they'll try to kill you and lastly you do what i say when i say it we clear sure repeat it what you say goes good also i like how he asks her to repeat it and she simplifies it instead which he isn't happy about but he doesn't have the energy to complain about it joel decides that if they want to make any distance they need a working car so he heads to the city his friend bill is holed up in because bill owes him a favor bill seems to be a little bit paranoid because the explosive traps that he has around his town and joel falls victim to another trap which wraps around his leg and pulls him upside down i love when games put the player in a gameplay scenario that isn't normal in the game and this is a case where it's done great ellie tries to cut you down and in the meantime the player has to fight off the horde of infected coming towards you it feels wrong to play this way which is exactly how it should feel and i love the sequence in every way it gets even crazier when the fridge that is used as the counterweight gets knocked over lifting joel even higher into the air but it makes it to where the infected can't get to joel so you go from protecting yourself to protecting ellie joel gets cut down and gets swarmed by some infected only to be saved by a machete wielder a moment later this armored up masked man is bill and he's coming to save joel and ellie there are way too many infected so the player is forced to run away which is also something i really like it's cool when there are so many enemies that even though it seems like you could take some down at the end of the day you have to run it makes you feel like no matter how good you are at the game you still can't handle 10 clickers so you have to run away when they get to a safe place bill's trust issues kick in and he handcuffs ellie to a pole and starts searching joel weirdly enough ellie breaking the pipe and hitting bill actually helps their situation since they aren't at bill's liberty anymore and they discuss the logistics of their deal for a car bill owes joel some kind of favor and while we don't get to know what it is it's enough for bill to take them on a risky trip to grab a battery from a crashed military vehicle also ellie constantly argues with bill and makes jokes about his weight and they're pretty funny damn town's booby trap best stay right on my ass can't miss it knock it off before they can go find the military vehicle they have to gear up at one of bill's safe houses so they make their way there taking out some infected at the safe house bill gives joel a shotgun and a nail bomb two great additions to his arsenal since they're both very powerful ellie asks joel for a gun because they need all the help that they can get but he refuses since at this point she's still just a kid that he needs to smuggle i think it's pretty cool how bill talks some trash about tess here without knowing that she's dead and joel just puts up with it because he doesn't want to think about tess being gone you can tell that bill and joel could be good friends but they totally get on each other's nerves they leave the bunker to find the high schools the military truck crashed into and they have to travel through a bunch of houses to get there it's funny when ellie once again says she'd be more helpful if she has a gun and joel just tells her to shut up because he knows she's right but he just doesn't want to admit it quick side note i'm almost positive this house right here is supposed to be a reference to clementine's house from the walking dead i mean it's got the tree house the pool the sliding glass door and the kitchen in the same spot but i don't know they finally get into the high school to the military truck only to find that the battery is missing and a horde of infected is inside the school with them they'd fight through them to get into the gymnasium but things aren't much better in there this is a bloater and bloaters are like the classic enemy that gets introduced as a boss fight but eventually when you're better at the game later on he's just a difficult enemy the bloater throws acid bombs that do damage at you and also charge at you to kill you in one hit just like clickers the cool thing about the last of us infected people is the type of zombie they are just depends on how long they've been infected so runners are semi new clickers have been infected for a while and bloaters have been infected the longest now is a great time to mention that all of the enemy and character designs are really cool and all the enemies are legitimately scary when they're running at you once they escape the school they get chased and escape into a random house where after joel and bill argue about the battery they see someone hanging from the ceiling bill realizes that it's his former boyfriend who he apparently kind of hated but he still seems to care about him ellie finds in his garage a truck with the battery from the military vehicle in it and even though it's dead they can recharge it by trying to turn on the car while it's moving therefore charging the battery they start pushing the truck and bill explains how to use the clutch to try and start the car and it's super funny how ellie responds just keep your foot on the clutch and when we get the right i know how to pop a clutch how the hell did you know what i don't care just don't [ __ ] it up actually though how does she have any idea how to pop a clutch i doubt cars have been readily available since she's been alive considering they had to go through all this effort just to get one car the truck gets pushed towards a hill where ellie can charge the battery and joel and bill regularly stop to fight off infected coming at them finally they start the car and they have to drive to safety before bill gets out and says goodbye in his own special way she did hold her own back there you ain't gonna make it the game cuts to joel and ellie driving in the rain presumably being on the road for a while and this part is awesome because of how many jokes are put into just this one cut scene i feel like this is when the two really start talking to each other for enjoyment rather than just making small talk if that makes any sense joel doesn't seem to be annoyed by ellie anymore in fact he actually seems to be pretty amused i'm sure your friend will be missing this tonight [Music] light on the reading but it's got some interesting photos ellie that ain't for kids oh why are these all stuck together just [ __ ] with you bye-bye dude when cars are completely blocking the highway joel decides to take the exit to hopefully find an unblocked road when they're driving they get approached by an injured man or at least that's what it looks like to an untrained eye i'm gonna help him put your seat belt on ellie what about the guy he ain't even hurt so these are a group called hunters they basically attack people randomly to try and get loot off of them joel nelly's truck that they work so hard to get is totaled so after fighting off some hunters it's back on foot for them joel does briefly explain how he knew the injured man was a trap by saying that he's been on both sides meaning in the earlier days of the apocalypse he was part of the hunters the fact that ellie always pushes joel for information about his past and gets shut down is pretty funny like when she asks if he killed a lot of innocent people joel just stays quiet leading her to thinking the answer is yes the duo ends up in a fallen quarantine zone that is now run by the hunters and the hunters are told to look out for the guy and the little girl that killed the other people they take down even more hunters in some kind of mall and ellie says a line from the comic book that she's been reading savage starlight excuse me okay maybe i'm reading too far into it but to me this feels like ellie is comparing her own situation to something that would happen in a comic book it's kind of like when you're bored and decide to pretend your life is a movie for a second like you're just an actor okay maybe i'm the only one that does that but i think she's applying what she's reading from the comic into her real life because the scenarios really aren't all that different something that starts slowly being introduced is ellie leading in front of joel instead of trailing behind him at first when she just met him she's a bit more closed off and follows his lead but now she starts giving suggestions about how they can get past things and makes goofy jokes like this one in the hotel the hell are you doing you are a weird kid they go up into the elevator shaft but the elevator joel is standing on falls causing them to get separated joel makes his way back up from the basement of the hotel only to be attacked by a hunter who starts drowning him in a puddle on the ground things look bad for joel while he's reaching for his gun but suddenly ellie finds him and picks up the gun and shoots the guy clearly based on her reaction she's never had to kill anybody and even though she just saved his life joel doesn't offer any kind of reassurance and instead gets mad at her for staying back at this point joel started pissing me off a little bit like i get why he wouldn't want her to have a gun at first but at this point i think she's proven herself plenty by saving joel when he gets grabbed and saving him by shooting the hunter eventually they get outside of the hospital onto a fire escape and joel finally decides to let ellie use a gun he leaves her on the fire escape with a rifle to shoot down at the people who are fighting joel i think it's pretty awesome how they always try to make joel try to hide his emotions only for ellie to see right through them like how he decides to reassure ellie that it was him or the hunter that would have been killed and ellie understands that it's his twisted way of saying thank you throughout this fight she'll shoot down on the hunters and she's actually very helpful there are multiple times when i was in trouble during this fight and she would actually bail me out and it's definitely nice to have helpful ally ai i guess i should also mention that she does do this when she's on the ground as well like if joel gets grabbed she'll stab the guy grabbing him from behind overall ellie does a great job helping with the rifle so when she comes down joel finally trusts her with a pistol of her own about something a little more your size thank god i was begging joel away from back at bill's place to give her a pistol so that she could help out the cool thing about this is that joel doesn't take risks so he must really believe that she's earned the right to pack heat joel and ellie get a small sneak peek of a tank that the hunters somehow got their hands on and it helps reassure the player that the hunters are horrible people considering they just killed two random people as they continue on this tank is constantly hunting them down forcing joel and ellie to escape up into an open window in an apartment building joel instantly gets attacked and while he's handling things ellie stops him because a little kid is pointing a gun right at him look oh leave him alone oh easy son just take it easy it's all right they're not the bad guys lower the gun joel realizes that this guy is not a hunter and he stops beating the crap out of this dude and the dude's pretty chill even though he was just destroyed by joel joel agrees to follow henry who is the douche he beat up and his little brother sam to a hideout so they can talk in peace about how they can help each other with these hunters the new crew starts making their way to the hideout and they stop at a toy store where they have to hide while the tank passes by we get to see henry's survival strategy of traveling light when sam wants to take a toy from the toy store because his bag is empty anyways but henry thinks that they should only grab what they need because anything else is a waste and will only bring them down got in this damn sam what are you doing nothing get rid of it my backpack is practically empty what's the rule about taking stuff it weighs like nothing the rule what is it we only take what we have to that's right now come on it seems like henry is trying to keep sam focused at all times and he believes distractions are a bad idea he shows multiple times throughout the fights they endure that sam's survival is all that he cares about and we see this reinforced when he constantly tells sam to stay right by his side and hide when things get dangerous once they fight through some hunters and get to their hideout henry explains his plan to try and escape the city while the skeleton crew is watching the gate at night time they discover that they're both looking for the fireflies so it's best that they stick together to work towards their common goal and henry says that they're leaving tonight to finally escape this horrific city something cool that we get to see is a little bit of a connection from sam and ellie they both seem to be pretty happy to have somebody else their age to talk to ow it's been a while since that boy even cracked a smile they take out the guards at the gate with no problem until the hunters bring out the tank which starts breaking through the gate door to get to the squad on the other side they start climbing over a truck to escape but once everybody has been boosted up except for joel the door start being broken down and henry decides that there's no time for them to help joel and he runs away with sam of course ellie and joel are pretty upset about this and ellie jumps back down to help joel only for them to have to make a mad dash away from the truck to a dead end on a bridge ellie thinks that they should jump into the water even though she can't swim but joel thinks it's a dumb idea but ellie doesn't leave him much of a choice [Music] like i said before ellie is starting to finally make some decisions against joel's authority and i think it's because they're slowly becoming more of equals than joel taking care of her joe wakes up on the shore to see henry and sam who saved them from the water and joel attacks henry for good reason and puts him at gunpoint henry explains that coming back and trying to help joel would have been putting sam at risk and he asked if joel would have done differently in this situation something that i love in video games is when a character does a crappy thing that makes you upset at them but then they're able to justify their actions i guess this is a spoiler for the walking dead but not really it's similar to chuck in the walking dead season 1 when he randomly told clementine that she's gonna die making the player really mad that he would say that to a little girl only to explain that they have no plan and she doesn't know how to defend herself it's always evident of good writing whenever something like that happens because the character makes good points and that's what henry does here to stop joel from shooting him the group then travels down the shore and into the sewer system and they split up a couple of times to search different areas it's interesting how you can overhear henry reassuring sam that's a good idea to stick with joel and ellie in a word like this whenever new characters come in i'm always hesitant whether they're going to be a twist villain or something but to me hearing these conversations just adds so much to the game and makes me feel good about the characters they explore through the sewers and eventually find what looks like a fallen little community that has school materials and sleeping quarters in the works now i'm going to give the spark notes here because the lore behind the sewer is pretty cool and extensive but basically this guy named ish holed up in the sewer and eventually started inviting people in they built up a community and had schools and water collectors but one day they were invaded by clickers and they were all killed you get all this information from notes that you find throughout the sewers and if you want to know more about it you can find it on the wiki or i'm sure there's a youtube video about it the great thing about this is it makes the sewers feel lived in like you're traveling through somebody's home and it's super eerie unfortunately an effect of this fallen community is that there are a lot of clickers and when a trap causes a door to separate the crew into duos clickers begin to attack them from everywhere the group was split into henry with ellie and joel was sam and we meet a new zombie type here these zombies are called stalkers and they'll hide behind pillars and walls only to jump out and grab you right as you pass by when the group finally meets up again they're stuck behind a gate only for sam to crawl through and unblock the door to let them through sam is definitely trying to prove himself to henry that he's able to help out and he doesn't need to be a liability they finally get to the blocked exit and they're able to boost sam and ellie out of a window so they can try and open the door and joel and henry take a stand here until they get the door open they do see a warning about the infected inside the sewer on the other entrance which is pretty funny look at oh this you [ __ ] kidding me thanks for the warning on the other side guys so where's this henry continues to lead the group to the radio tower that his group was in and they come to a suburban area that has a lot of houses to loot i was shocked when i was replaying this section because of how many little interactions there are in the world i was just searching the house and suddenly i saw ellie and sam just chilling playing darts and then at the end it let joel throw a dark and it just felt really real also ellie sees an ice cream truck and is just in disbelief when joel explains how they worked in the old days which again shows off the incredible writing in this game they get to an open street only to be sniped at and joel has the rest of the crew distracting while he makes his way over to take the sniper down after stealthing around he gets into the building and takes the sniper down only for joel to take the sniping position to guard the rest of the crew from the remaining enemies while the rifle takes the enemies down quickly it can't take down the tank that comes rolling into the battlefield luckily joel gets the chance to shoot the guy in the tank when he pokes his head out to throw a molotov and the molotov explodes in the tank causing it to be destroyed they don't have time to relax because clickers come and attack them shortly afterwards and joel has to shoot some off of them eventually there are way too many clickers so the crew has to make their escape out of the suburb and they finally get to the radio tower only to find that the rest of henry's crew is not there henry and joel finally start bonding about motorcycles and everything seems to be going right for once i'm not ellie ellie this isn't just any regular motorcycle okay you get on that bad boy you feel that engine nothing like it oh yeah how would you know seen it in my dreams okay in the meantime ellie talks to sam and he gets surprisingly morbid for some reason talking about what happens when you turn into a clicker and if she believes in god and how ellie's afraid of being alone etc ellie takes out the robot toy that sam originally wanted to grab and gives it to him but once she leaves the room he throws it on the ground and reveals a bite he must have gotten it when joel was sniping the clickers off from on top of them and it's really unfortunate in the morning when ellie goes to wake sam up she's attacked by an infected sam instead and henry doesn't let joel shoot him to save ellie instead doing it himself [ __ ] really i gotta feel right oh my god see you oh no see henry stay there henry what are you doing i'm gonna get that gun from me okay oh okay okay easy this is nobody's fault in me it's all your fault henry and reno [Music] [Music] i cannot explain to you how incredibly hard that music hits when the scene goes black i'm a sucker for music and video games and i'm very susceptible to the emotions it's supposed to make you feel so this somber little tune that comes in after henry does unalive makes you soak it in with the darkness henry and sam are both great allies with joel getting along with henry and sam getting along with ellie but unfortunately the now duo got their recently formed friendships ripped away from them these characters were only in the game for a short while but their incredible writing and characterization led to a wonderful addition to the game that makes the player hurt when they're taken out it reminds the player about the mortality that you have and it reinforces the infected as a threat to joel and ellie if sam can get sneak attacked and bitten by a clicker what's preventing something like that from happening to ellie once we're on the black screen we see that the season has changed to fall meaning a good amount of time has passed a small time jump like this makes things feel like they have really changed after henry and sam's death the little details like their different outfit in a rainy environment show things aren't quite the same anymore but they have no choice but to keep pushing on joel and ellie are almost to jackson city which is where uncle tommy should be joel explains that he and tommy didn't leave on the best terms and that he doesn't know how seeing him again is going to go what happened between you two what do you mean you and tommy you're not together so clearly something went down i just had a bit of a disagreement that's all ah here we go what was it about tommy saw the world one way i saw that how was it the last time you saw it i believe his last words to me were i don't ever want to see your goddamn face again they come up on a hydroelectric dam that they can cross i also like this dialogue that you can hear when you find a grave about henry and sam where ellie wants to talk about it but joel refuses similar to how he did with tess and he just wants to move on that's too small great i forgot to leave that stupid robot on his grave what should i do with it um what i want to talk about it no why not how many times do we need to go over this things happen and we move on it's just that's enough you're right i'm sorry let's get to tommy's they get to a big gate where they're put at gunpoint only for the door to open up and show that it's good old tommy on the other side we also meet maria his wife and they get invited inside for a tour of the power plant tommy explains that they have a community in jackson city that has families and had power before the power plant stopped working they're here trying to get the power plant fixed and it's really interesting seeing all the workers talking about their families and how they're on shifts like a normal world it's almost like they don't have to worry about infected and they're just living their lives here tommy and joel go to check out the progress on fixing the power plant but before then tommy offers joel a picture of him and sarah but joel refuses because he still can't deal with the pain of losing her they get the power plant working and joel wants to talk to tommy and he explains ellie's immunity joel wants tommy to take ellie the rest of the way to the firefly since tommy will know where they are but tommy has family that he has to take care of and he doesn't want to risk his life when he has a good thing going on already and joel gets a bit aggressive i got nothing but nightmares from those years you survived because of me it wasn't worth it i bring you the cure from mankind and you wanna play the pissy little brother we ain't back in boston you lay your hands on me again it won't end well for you the hell is that we're under attack you still remember how to kill right yeah i mean it makes sense tommy says they have a big community with walls and sure while he could potentially create a vaccine and save a lot of lives he's already living a life that he enjoys in his community at the end of the day it is a bit selfish but he doesn't want to risk what he has for others luckily their fight gets interrupted by a raid on the power plant and the brothers are forced to fight their way through to get to ellie and maria who are pinned down by the raiders whenever the brothers save them ellie starts talking up a storm to joel about what happened oh man they were coming in from every direction that maria was like we gotta run and so we dove over these tables and this huge guy blasted with the shots slow down seeing this connection with joel and ellie convinces tommy that he has to take ellie to the fireflies and even though maria doesn't want him to do it tommy's made up his mind joel won't let ellie know that he's trying to hand her off to tommy so ellie gets upset and runs away on a horse tommy and joel chase after her and fight raiders along the way only to find ellie sitting in a house reading a diary she talks about how kids didn't have to worry about anything back then other than boys and dressing up and you can really feel how even though she's talking trash about a life like that she wishes she could live that way joy gets upset at her for running away because her life is important and ellie's mad that he wants to hand her off to tommy ellie says that maria told her about sarah and she starts pushing joel about it which makes him pretty upset the conversation gets cut short when the raiders invade the house i think joel actually likes being around ellie a lot which is why he's pushing her away when you've lived the life that joel has and lost so many people including your daughter eventually connecting with people is scary joel thinks that if he sticks with ellie he's eventually going to see her suffer the same fate as tess or sam and he doesn't want to stay to see that happen even if ellie wants to stay with him because she's the only person that she cares about that hasn't died it's understandable but like they say it's better to love and lost than to never love at all joel never wants to care about someone again because of the fear of losing them but isn't it better to be with them as long as you can even if you lose them eventually clearly joel is thinking about the same things i'm talking about here on their way back to tommy city jackson because after seeing the city he asked to keep the horse he's writing and tells ellie to come with him tommy tells joel where their lab is and joel explains that he's taking ellie himself under the pretense that tommy's wife scares him even though he's actually decided that he doesn't want to leave ellie we skip forward to when joel and ellie have arrived at the university that tommy said the fireflies are set up at right away joel and ellie are having a normal conversation about football and i love how their connection is great enough to where they can talk about things that don't have to do with survival they still have their horse who ellie named kallus for some reason obviously they're hoping to find the fireflies at this university but things aren't looking so great when they find infected in areas of the school you can tell ellie is starting to get antsy about the fireflies when they haven't seen any despite being on the campus but joel is quick to reassure her by saying things like they might just keep a low profile or they're just using clickers as defense like bill did you can't deny the bond that joel and ellie have at this point in the game ellie asks if joel ever went to college and the fact that he even mentions sarah in his response shows how he's opening up you ever been to one of these what university yeah no not as a student at least why not uh i had sarah when i was pretty young were you married for a while what happened okay too much too much the fact that he can simply say okay and she knows that she's pushing too far shows that they've gotten very used to talking to each other they get inside the building where the firefly should be but everything seems presumably abandoned i like how ellie and joel are trying to stay positive like once ellie realizes they definitely aren't in this building she says how there's no bodies meaning they probably aren't dead after some more exploration they find a voice recorder that explains all the fireflies have left to go to a hospital in salt lake city after hearing the recording the hunters promptly attack them and the duo battle their way out of the science building joel gets surprise attacked when opening a door and the guy pushes him off a balcony to wear okay just check this out [Music] yes joel lands on a piece of rebar that impales him through the gut and after ellie takes him off the player is given control again the game does an excellent job of making you feel hurt while you play as him like you wish you could control him easier just like joel wishes he could move easier without his injury holding him back the screen distorts blurs and tilts you can hear joel's heartbeat in your ears along with sounds fading in and out and your movement speed is slowed to a crawl they make their way out to the exit until they get attacked by a couple of hunters and joel passes out we get to see how much of a beast ellie has become when she takes them out on her own [Music] [Music] they make it to the exit and get back on kalos the horse but they don't make it very far before joel falls off the horse and passes out and you can hear the fear in ellie's voice [Music] you gotta tell me what to do come on you gotta get up [Music] this whole game joel has been telling ellie what to do despite some defiance from her and now he can't help her help him i said this before but i love the cut to black the game takes away your visual sensory just to hit you with the music instead while you start to question whether you just watched the character you've been playing as all game die it especially hurts because joel just started becoming a dad-like figure to ellie and now the possibility that he might be dead is terrifying we once again skip to another season winter and we see ellie trudging through the snow trying to find food she finds a deer that she decides to chase after the player now controls ellie and has to shoot at this deer with the bow and hunt it down by making the player do a simple task like hunting an animal it forces them to think about what just happened it doesn't let the player try to move on immediately like it did with henry and sam especially since the switch to ellie as the player character implies things didn't go great for joel eventually ellie kills the deer and while she is inspecting its corpse a couple of men come out of nowhere and say they just want to talk but of course ellie keeps the bow pointed at them the entire time they say they're from a larger group that's running out of food and they say they can trade something for some of the deer meat in which ellie responds that she needs antibiotics weapons ammo clothes medicine do you have any antibiotics hearing ellie say this is an instant sigh of relief for the player if she needs medicine that must mean that joel is still alive even if he's in a bad condition the man who introduces himself as david sends his friend to give medicine for ellie to trade and they wait in a broken down house for him to return in the meantime the house gets invaded by infected and the two team up to defend themselves in the house at first when i played through i distrusted david as you should for any stranger in the apocalypse but fighting with him really helped build a bit of trust as he's pretty nice and is capable in a fight they kill off a lot more infected including clickers and a bloater but eventually they realize that they killed them all david and ellie go back to the fire they made and david confesses that things haven't been going well for him since a couple of people started taking out his men he said that the others had been slaughtered by a crazy man and get this crazy man traveling a little girl when he says that a crazy man with a little girl was killing his people the realization instantly kicks in and it's followed up with david's friend pointing a gun at ellie before david stops him david gives ellie the medicine and lets her leave despite her and joel killing his people in self-defense in the past ellie takes the chance and leaves before he changes his mind and she returns to a house where she has an unconscious jewel wrapped up in blankets and she gives them the antibiotics she got this game has a dlc that shows what happens between the fall and winter season and it explains how ellie was able to get the suturing kit to sew joel up while i won't talk about that dlc here it is kind of interesting and it shows the lengths that ellie went so that joel could stay alive in the morning ellie realizes that david's people followed her back to the house and she decides to lure them away on horseback to keep joel safe ellie does all of this for joel because like she said earlier everybody else has died on her and she's not going to let that happen to another person she cares about unfortunately while she's escaping they shoot callus leaving ellie to run away on foot she has to fight her way through a lot of hunters to try and circle back to the house and it's important to know that ellie's gameplay is just a little bit different than joel's ellie is very good with the bow and she can basically one shot anybody with it she obviously doesn't have the same brawn as joel so instead of sneak attacking with a chokehold she jumps on them and stabs them in the neck which i think makes stealth kills a bit more difficult for her now you might think that it's unrealistic for elliot to be able to take down all of these full grown men and yes it is but i don't think that it matters i think it's much more cool to be able to be sneaky and use the bow as ellie because it makes you feel like such an underdog taking them down one by one i think it would be a lot more lame if they force you to not fight anybody and just run away because it's unrealistic for ellie to be able to take care of herself at the end of the day she has plenty of experience killing these people who are clearly very untrained so while it is definitely not likely for her to take these people down i wouldn't say it's impossible despite her taking out a lot of his men david is able to trap ellie and put her in a jail cell where she wakes up to see that his community hunts people down and butchers them for food david gives her some food that could be human meat but ellie is starving and has no choice but to eat which is why her description of him is super accurate you're a [ __ ] animal david explains that she can become one of his people in a weird kind of way saying she's special and stuff now i don't know how much i can talk about here considering i just became partnered with youtube and i don't want to lose that so let's just say a lot of people think that he's a file in cabinet if you get what i mean which i think you can kind of see in this clip the only way i'm going to be able to convince the others convince some of what that you can come around you have heart you're loyal and you're special oh now i can't speak to how true something like this is but nolan north the actor says he believes david is trying to be a protective figure similar to joel but unlike joel he's warped and twisted in his intentions for protecting ellie luckily ellie is too cool for this horrific dude and breaks one of his fingers only to have david imply that she's gonna be cut into food we cut to joel finally waking up as it seems the antibiotics have saved him from sepsis and the first thing he thinks about is where ellie is he leaves the house and fights david's people while screaming at them to tell him where ellie is and he gets attacked by a few people but he takes them down and ties him in a house joel tortures them to get information about ellie and he does not mess around the girl is she alive what girl i don't know no girl [ __ ] focus right here right here i'll pop your goddamn knee off a girl she's alive this is david's newest pet park it on the map and it better be the same exact spot your buddy points to market it's right there [ __ ] you man he told you what you wanted i ain't telling you [ __ ] that's all right believe him no wait this cemented joel as the banff that he is for me he is so freaking cool and his determination to save ellie is formidable joel is so cool we go back to ellie's perspective where david takes her and puts her on a table to be cut up for food ellie makes a smart play by telling david that she's infected which stops him in his tracks and allows ellie to kill his friend and run i'm infected really so are you right there rolling my sleeve look at it i'll play along everything happens for a reason right what the hell is that she would have turned by now it can't be real looks pretty [ __ ] real to me ellie makes her way through more people and something that's kind of cool is that you can hear them talking about her clearly rumors of ellie being infected are spreading throughout the militia and you can hear some of them are pretty scared eventually ellie makes it to a large cabin and as she tries to escape david burks through the door and attacks her knocking over a lantern and starting a fire she makes it away just for a moment and david takes the time to lock the door to make sure that it's only him and ellie in there david was originally just trying to capture ellie and somehow assimilate her into their group however after she broke his finger he just wants to kill her which is shown off by him hunting her down with a machete and pistol this is basically a boss fight between ellie and david david will hunt her down while you have to sneak behind him and stab him he has a little bit more awareness than normal enemies which makes it a little bit harder to attack him and there's also glass on the floor that makes noise when you step on it alerting him to your position david will also shout out menacing things while he's hunting you saying stuff like her horse callus won't go to waste you have to get three stabs off on david before you beat him and once you get the third stab david throws both of them against the wall and they get knocked out the perspective switches back to joel with more guards blocking his path i like the sound design that happens at this moment with this bell ringing in the background it happened when ellie ran through here and now that we hear it as joel as well we know he's really close to finding her joel also finds ellie's backpack along with a bunch of corpses being prepped for food and this makes joel even more frantic to find ellie so she doesn't have to suffer the same fate what is this stuff here oh christ i gotta find her i gotta find her joel sees the burning building that ellie's in before it cuts back to ellie's view where ellie wakes up before david and starts crawling towards his machete he gets up and pushes her back down before getting on top of her and starting to choke her luckily ellie is able to grab the machete you have no idea what i'm capable of look it's me so ellie goes absolutely ham on david with the machete and when joel comes in to stop her she doesn't realize it's him which is why she's struggling he calms her down and this is the connection to the beginning of the game that's been building up the whole time joel calls her baby girl which is what he called sarah when he laid her down in bed at the very start ellie is a daughter to joel at this point they've traveled across half the country in six months or so and finally he knows he is her father figure the comforting done by joel here is amazing he doesn't try to ask her what happened or who it was she just kills he simply just tells her it's okay now and hugs her which is the best thing he could have done for her at that moment joel says something to ellie that we can't hear as the player but it's better that we can whatever it is that joel is saying is just for ellie to hear and at this point i feel like the game is trying to simulate the stress of the situation it feels like when you're so wrapped up in your thoughts that you aren't listening to anything around you and the camera shakily panning to david's bloody machete emphasizes what just happened the game doesn't show us david's body and i think it's because that's not the player's drama that's ellie's ellie doesn't want to see how she mutilated that body she wants to just leave and be safe so in turn the player doesn't get to see what she did to him once again the game cuts to black and changes seasons to spring it starts out with joel and ellie on a highway where they see the sign for a hospital nearby which may be where the fireflies are joel tries to talk to ellie a bit but she seems very distant and has short responses ellie is clearly not the same as she was before she trails a good bit behind joel and stays quiet just like she was in the beginning of the game this time it's not because she doesn't know joel it's because she's still wrapped up with what happened during winter and as a player it kinda hurt seeing her acting this way ellie normally cracks jokes and makes comments but now joel's the one trying to make conversation with her it also sucks because at least for me the best part of the game was talking to ellie and at this point i was just praying that ellie was gonna come back to her normal self i mean it makes sense why she wouldn't be but it still sucks luckily she sees something that brings her childhood innocence back for a second and when joel goes to investigate he realizes that it's a giraffe you have to keep in mind that ellie has never been to a zoo or anything so just seeing a giraffe is a huge deal for her and it's nice to see you're so happy about something [Music] they get onto an open space on top of a building and see there's a whole pack of giraffes and ellie and joel lean on the railing for a moment watching joel asks for the same question he did way back with tess is it everything you hoped for to which ellie actually has an answer this time so is everything you were hoping for [Music] it's got its ups and downs but you can't deny the view though [Music] sure ellie has been through some traumatic stuff at this point but she's also gotten to experience a lot of things that she wouldn't have in that quarantine zone and i imagine that's why she responds with it's got its ups and downs this is one of my favorite parts of the game right here because you don't have to leave the railing the game lets you spend as much time as you want just staring out into the landscape and it's one of the most beautiful environments in the entire game this is a great time to just slow down and appreciate life just as berlici says it's got its ups and downs [Music] you can't deny the view though bro we need to slow down in our day-to-day we need to slow down and appreciate wow look at the mountains look at the scale all right come on we got [ __ ] to do when preparing to head to the hospital joel offers to ellie that they could just leave and go back to tommy's place instead of going through all the effort with the fireflies but ellie refuses and says they have to follow through joel reminisces about the beginning of the apocalypse when they walk through an area similar to a place joel used to be in and ellie asked if he lived there before or after sarah died to where joel responds afterwards this doesn't seem like a big deal but joel has only talked about sarah in very certain scenarios and now ellie is able to ask him questions about her and he'll actually respond instead of dodging the question because their bond is now so strong ellie decides to give joel the picture of him and sarah that she stole from tommy's place and this time joel finally accepts it saying you can't escape from your past well no matter how hard you try i guess you can't escape your past thank you the duo makes their way through a drab tunnel that has one last big infected fight that includes tons of runners multiple clickers and two bloaters and the later end of the tunnel is filled with water they do some interesting platforming to get to a part of the tunnel with an intense current so they have to be extra careful not to fall in and be swept away unfortunately their carefulness is pointless because when they both try to get on this bus it starts moving with the current and joel gets stuck inside of it ellie tries to get onto the bus to save him but she gets knocked off and joel grabs her and gets them both out of the water only to find that ellie isn't breathing he tries to give her cpr but he gets approached by a couple of soldiers who knock him out before he can save ellie he wakes up in the hospital to see that marlene is right next to him and they finally found the fireflies finally the objective that ellie and joel have been working towards the entire game has been completed and joel's relieved to hear that ellie's okay marlene then tells her that the cordyceps infection inside of her has mutated which causes her immunity and they can get it out to make a cure unfortunately with one big consequence to it a vaccine but it grows all over the brain it does find someone else there is no one else listen you were going to show me stop the surgery is going to kill ellie and of course joel doesn't want that to happen what's interesting is marlene is basically the equivalent of ellie's mom yet she's willing to sacrifice ellie to save the world but joel who's basically her dad is not going to give up another child joel wanted to hand ellie off to tommy originally so he didn't have to risk seeing ellie die but now that he's committed to staying with her he's not going to let her get taken away from him even if it's selfish marlene understands that jolt isn't going to give up about it so she instructs that he'd be escorted outside the building she does make the horrible mistake of only making one guard escort him and joel's able to handle him with little to no effort where's the operating room i ain't got time for this where top floor the far end we get to see the lengths that joel will go to save ellie at this point there are multiple rooms of heavily armed guards that he has to make his way through and this would pretty much be a death sentence for anybody else joel also picks up an ar off of the guard and it's super powerful so i'm glad they waited until the end of the game to give it to you or else it would be way too strong i mean you can see from this footage in the background that i use my ar exclusively for the final fight because i accidentally used all of my materials on the previous ones and despite it taking me multiple tries the strength of the rifle helped me make it through after fighting through hordes of guards joel breaks into the operating room and is confronted by the main surgeon who tries to stop him from taking ellie i love how you don't get an option to spare him he's gonna try and stop you no matter what so the game forces you to kill him even if you think what joel is doing is wrong you don't get a say in the matter after you kill that doctor you do get to choose to kill the other doctors because they won't try to stop you and joel grabs ellie from the table once again calling her baby girl then they kick the music in and blare the alarms as joel carries ellie to safety and the music combined by the lack of ability to kill any enemies provides a feeling of desperation joel's able to duck into an elevator and use the emergency button to stall the guards once he's down but before he escapes marlene stops him and tries to convince joel one last time that ellie has to die to create this cure because it's for the good of mankind we don't get to hear his answer because it cuts him driving away from the hospital and it seems that he let her go until we hear her in the backseat of the truck joel decides the best thing to do for ellie is to lie about what really happens he said that there are dozens of other immune people but they still can't make a cure so the fireflies let him leave we found the fireflies [Music] turns out there's a whole lot more like you ellie people that are immune to dozens actually anytime a damn bit of good neither they've actually they've stopped looking for a cure i'm taking this home i'm sorry we do get to see what actually happened with marlene he shot her in the stomach before finishing her off to make sure she didn't try to find ellie the game cuts quite a bit ahead to them arriving at a sign that says jackson city which is tommy's community we play as ellie here and it's super cool to be in her perspective with joel for once instead of joel being injured or separated now joel openly talks about sarah he's finally moved on because he has somebody new to care about don't think i ever told you but uh sarah and i used to take hikes like this i think uh i think the two of you would have been would have been good friends i think you really would have liked it knew she had luck i bet i would have before they make their way down to the city ellie has to talk to joel about her feelings and it sounds like she has survivors guilt because of all the people who died along the way her friend riley tess and sam she's wondering why they died and she didn't and now that she can't make a cure her life has lost a lot of meaning joel basically shouts the theme at us saying that you always find something to stay alive for but ellie demands that joel tell her everything that he said about the fireflies was true joel swears that his lie was true and ellie accepts it so that they can move on with their lives before the credits roll swear to me that everything that you've said about the fireflies is true i swear [Music] okay [Music] [Music] i love this ending so much there's so much mystery to it does ellie really believe joel is jackson going to be their permanent home what are they going to do now that they don't have to fight for their lives so much is exciting about this ending now that they can finally move on it's a little bit abrupt but it's the journey's end they aren't trying to find anybody and they can just live there's an obvious question about the game and that's whether joel did the right thing or not joel saves ellie which in turn likely causes the death of the millions of people remaining on earth from the lack of a cure from an outsider's perspective killing one person to save the many is an easy choice but from somebody that's involved with the one person it makes it so much more difficult of course the right option is to make a cure and that's likely what most people were thinking while playing but at least on my playthrough another part of me is on the same side of joel wanting to save ellie from being killed what joel does is incredibly selfish he dooms the earth to keep somebody he holds dear to himself but can we really say that we would have done differently or at least thought about not letting our loved one go through with it another thing is joel's lie he had to lie to ellie because he's positive that if she got a say in it she would sacrifice herself so her life has a purpose i think most people would be willing to sacrifice themselves and again it's very selfish of joel not to provide the choice to ellie about whether she wants to live or die personally i don't know if i could have done what joel couldn't think about giving away the person you loved the most it isn't so easy like i said before joel opened his heart to ellie after not allowing it to open for anybody else for a long time under the pretense that he wouldn't have to deal with losing her so when her life is threatened all he cares about is not losing the one he loves overall i love this ending at the end of the day joel doomed the world but in the process he saved his world which is ellie [Music] this game has to be one of the most delicately crafted emotional stories that i've ever experienced the developers thought about everything every single scene is engineered to get feelings out of you whether it's joy or sorrow or anger or disappointment the way they display the game to you pulls these emotions right out of the player i don't even think i can put into words how much the music changes the game as a whole the way the season changes would go black and kick in the music in the background gives me chills literally every time i experience it the acting in this game is superb yes acting not just voice acting the game is all motion capture so the actors are basically doing the scenes in real life just as they would an actual movie the actors were lucky enough to get creative input about the game and their characters and you can tell that they were completely in the role when they were recording for the game i don't understand how this game perfectly nails storytelling half of the game is just a typical gun game where you make your way through enemies with stealth or guns blazing but the difference is your characters are always interacting with each other over the smallest things and it makes the world feel real if there's a movie poster joel and ellie will talk about the movie if there's an ice cream chuck ellie will ask what it is all these little things make the characters not characters they become real people joel has to be my favorite protagonist of any game ever he's a flawed person in every sense of the word he's aggressive he's killed people he's selfish but he's also caring emotional and delicate he is the epitome of a man who has blocked himself from his feelings and only when ellie comes along is he able to open himself up to where he's able to freely talk about his late daughter the game also does a great job of not shoving too many characters in your face which is what i think the middle two walking dead game seasons don't do quite as well every side character is just as fleshed out as the main characters and because they're few and far between we get plenty of time to interact with them tess bill henry sam david all of them were just brimming with personality and character in a way that only incredible writing can do especially for the short time that they're in the game as corny as it is the story really is about the journey rather than the destination all of their objectives start out small get to the capitol building get a car get out of the city get to tommy's place if you explain the story from a bird's eye view it seems like nothing's really happening and they're just moving around the country but it's not until you get into the dialogue and the things that go wrong along the way that you get the juicy story that this experience provides as always i like to bring up a theme for the game and this time i think it's a living like joel says you always find something to keep fighting for but i'd like to elaborate even more on that sure you can find something to keep surviving for whether it's trying to protect somebody or just not wanting to die but then there's finding something to live for joel had been surviving all of these years with no real purpose other than to be alive but once he met ellie he had something to live for he knows he has to take care of ellie and he wants to be there for her she's his drive to survive and his drive to be a human being instead of the hardened smuggler he was at the beginning of the game a comment on the backlogged page for the last of us describes the game perfectly for me it says what is there to say this is simply a masterpiece i've played it three times so far and the emotional rollercoaster still excites me this is such a grey story it's not good versus bad all the characters are multi-layered and i love that it's quite an accomplishment if you can make a zombie game feel real end quote for many people i think this complete masterpiece of a game has become real because of the impact it has on their lives and the connection that you as the player build with the complex characters i don't even think i've said everything i want to in this conclusion and i could ramble on forever so i'll wrap this up really quick joel lies to ellie so that she can move on and live the best life that she could possibly have at jackson and he has absolutely no regrets when he swears to ellie allowing them to finally start living instead of just surviving [Music] so is everything you were hoping for [Music] it's got its ups and downs but you can't deny the view though [Music] hey guys uh once again thank you for making it to the end of the video you know i always like to do uh these little talks at the end about the process this one was a hard video guys i don't know why i feel like it's less straightforward than the walking dead so it was a little bit it took a while as you can tell sorry i get i got really busy with stuff and yeah i do want to get them out faster in the future but with school starting i just don't know if that's going to happen so we'll have to see um so i just i'm not even gonna lie it's nine nope 10 a.m right now for me i did not sleep i edited the whole thing just now so i'm a little bit uh brain dead right now but you know so also i was just getting like trolled by premiere pro for a second there was just like changing my audio levels so hopefully my test watcher here is gonna let me know if it sounds alright um things to look out for right when i post this video i'm gonna put up a poll as well and that poll is gonna be for games that what game do you guys want next and actually yeah and then also leave some in the comments if you want like a different one that's not on the poll yeah i really i had more to say but i don't really remember i really like the last of us it was really fun to make this video it's probably the cheesiest one i made so far but i feel like the theme it's like a pretty cheesy game in general yeah i really gotta finish this and send it to my test viewer so that he can make sure there's nothing like totally wrong with it and then i can upload it so hopefully it'll be out by like 12 today it's like one right now or 10 right now probably won't because it's going to export yeah you know the thing so thank you so much for watching um i really hope i really really hope you guys like it because i always try my best on them so see ya you

Channel: MagmaLeCreme

Views: 197,215

Keywords: The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Naughty Dog, Ellie, Joel, TLOU, TLOU Part 1, The Last of Us part 1, Playstation Exclusive, StoryRich, Great story, Joel and Ellie, The Last of Us part 2, The Last of Us analysis, Tess, Henry, Sam, Bill, Zombies, Apocalypse, Video documentary, Retrospective, Last of us Retrospective, Last of us remake, last of us comic, tlou story analysis, tlou ending, the last of us soundtrack, tlou music, David, Winter, Summer, Spring, Fall, Joel injury, Joel death, review

Id: i7NSNmJPmoE

Length: 86min 25sec (5185 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2022